USA TODAY: Budget Bill Leaves No Boondoggle Behind

USA TODAY, December 17, 2015

Republican congressional leaders are like a football coach who believes the secret to winning is to punt early and often. House Speaker Paul Ryan and others are claiming victory over the 2,000-plus page appropriations bill, but this is a “no boondoggle left behind” $1.1 trillion nightmare.

The bill fails to block President Obama from delivering up to $3 billion to the United Nations Green Climate Fund, a partial product of the Paris climate summit. Republicans initially planned to block such funding unless the Senate was permitted to vote on the U.N. climate treaty. But since the omnibus bill failed to prohibit such payments, Obama will soon deliver $500 million in U.S. tax money to the fund — despite the legendary record of U.N. programs for corruption worse than Chicago.

It fails to block the imminent proclamation of Food and Drug Administration regulations that could severely impact the sale of most of the cigars now marketed in the U.S., as well as ravaging the burgeoning e-cigarette industry (which experts say provides a healthier alternative to cigarettes).

The omnibus bill failed to include a provision to end Operation Choke Point, a Justice Department-Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s crackdown that pressured banks to cancel the accounts of gun stores, coin dealers, payday lenders and other disfavored industries in what Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis., derided as “weaponizing government to meet their ideological beliefs.”

The average federal worker is already paid more than $100,000 a year in total compensation, but the budget deal failed to block Obama from giving them a 1.3% raise — though many, if not most, taxpayers received zilch raise this year.

The bill extends the earned income tax credit without reforming it — though the IRS estimates that up to 25% of all handouts under the law are fraudulent or otherwise improper.

The bill provides almost $27 billion for public housing and Section 8. That includes an almost half a billion dollar increase for subsidized rental vouchers, despite the long record of havoc in neighborhoods where recipients cluster. The omnibus bill also dropped provisions to curb the Department of Housing and Urban Development from bankrolling fair housing entrapment-like operations or enforcing new regulations to bludgeon localities with a lower percentage of minorities than the national averages.

Some provisions of the bill seem harebrained even by Beltway standards. Republicans were justifiably outraged by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ “fast and furious” operation, which authorized sending more than a thousand guns to Mexican drug cartels. Section 276 of the omnibus bill prohibits federal agents from providing guns to anyone he “knows or suspects … is an agent of a drug cartel, unless law enforcement personnel of the United States continuously monitor or control the firearm at all times.” So the G-man is supposed to keep his finger on the suspect’s trigger at all times, or what? Perhaps it would be too easy to cease giving weapons to drug dealers.

Perhaps the most appalling part of the omnibus are the provisions that authorize tech and communication companies to secretly provide your personal data to federal agencies — no search warrant required. The American Civil Liberties Union warns that this information “can be used for criminal prosecutions unrelated to cyber security, including the targeting of whistle-blowers under the Espionage Act.” Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., rightly warns that a vote for the omnibus bill is a “vote to support unconstitutional surveillance on law-abiding Americans.”

While Congress made scant effort to protect average Americans from rampaging regulators, it hustled to include a provision requesting the Capitol Police to permit sledding on Capitol Hill. The “sled free or die” provision was a “bipartisan win,” according to The Washington Post. It is regrettable that there was little or no bipartisan interest in curbing federal power beyond spitting distance from the Capitol Dome.

House Freedom Caucus member Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., summarized the GOP leadership’s wacky reasoning: “Give the Democrats what they want now so next time they won’t want as much.” Republicans have been thunderously promising for decades to protect Americans against federal waste, fraud and abuse. At this rate, Republicans’ credibility gap will soon rival the $18 trillion federal debt.